Bocas del Toro has a wide range of places to live. There are beds in hostels available for $10/night, and beautiful beach-side villas at Red Frog Beach for over $400/night. It’s especially important to figure out what you want from going to Bocas. Do you want the experience of a sleepy little Central American town or do you want to relax on a secluded beach? There are pros and cons to each.
Lodging in Bocas Town offers access to grocery shopping, including places to get fresh water, internet, and access to most of the tour places, diving schools and restaurants. It also offers access to everywhere else. Bocas Town is the hub for water taxis and transportation.
On the down side, Bocas Town isn’t very pretty, unless you’re sitting in a restaurant that’s on a pier. It’s a typical Central American town with cracked sidewalks, litter, run down buildings and chickens, dogs and cats running around on the road. There is a beach just north of town, but you have to walk or ride a bike to get there.
Outside of Bocas Town, there are some stunning places to stay. While the town on Caranara Island is a depressing series of run-down huts, there are some lovely beaches and beautiful hotels and bungalows for rent outside of town. There’s also a small expat community on the northern point of the island with gorgeous houses, and we noticed a few of them had signs out front with apartments to rent. However, wherever you find a place, if you need internet, check to make sure it’s really reliable and a strong enough signal for your needs. Amazingly, most areas get cell coverage, so if you can do with a hot spot, you’re probably good. Just check to be sure. Another thing to think about outside of Bocas Town is access to food and fresh water. Outside of Bocas Town, people entirely rely on rainwater, so it’s possible fresh water could be in short supply at times. You will probably also have to take a water taxi into Bocas Town to grocery shop. You see people doing this all the time, hauling coolers off of water taxis to stock up for the week. Caranara and Bastimentos towns each have a grocery store, and there’s a high priced grocery store at Red Frog Beach, but even so, these issues are why a good number of the resorts and places to rent outside of Bocas Town are all-inclusive – they take care of the food and water issues. Although it makes for a perfect vacation, it was too expensive to stay all inclusive for the length of time we nest, however.
Those issues, plus the need for good, reliable internet, dictated us staying in Bocas Town. Happily, we still had contacts from the last time we were in Bocas, about ten years ago. We contacted some acquaintances and arranged to rent a two bedroom, two bath apartment over the water in Bocas Town at M&M Residencias. It was great for our needs; quiet, good internet, and with a beautiful view over the water. It was built in a traditional style, constructed of just wooden planks that you could see between to the outside when the sun was out, but remarkably, it had air conditioning that kept it at a very comfortable temperature. The kitchen was small but serviceable and the beds were comfortable, so it really had everything we needed!
After we were there, our landlord told us about a villa he recently built on Bastimentos Island. We walked through it and it is truly beautiful. My husband went there and used the Skype and was very impressed by the internet quality. It has three apartments with kitchens and sits right on the beach. Although the link I have describes a package deal with meals at his resort Al Natural, he said he’d be happy to rent it for month long periods without meals included, negotiating a different price than the listed price, of course. If you were to rent this, you’d need to make trips into town by boat to get groceries, but the setting might just be worth it! He did not quote a price to us, so you would have to see if it came in at budget for you.
Bocas is small enough that there’s really not a ‘bad’ or ‘good’ part of town. In fact, one of the striking things about Bocas town is that you very often have a beautiful hotel right next to a run-down shack. Places by the water are more apt to have other nicer places around them, but there’s no guarantee. The great part about it though, is while you see striking poverty in the way some people live, everyone is well-fed, generally happy and pleasant, and there are no beggars at all. Crime is low. That’s because the land here is very generous. A local friend pulled a fish trap up from the water off his dock to show us the red snappers that he has in constant supply. Trees with ripe bananas, coconuts, plantains and breadfruit grow right in town. A quick trip to the nearby jungle will supply an overwhelming amount of food just for the gathering. Locals will walk the street selling rock lobsters they caught and tomatoes they grew. People may be poor, but they are not hungry.
As of this writing, there was a new facebook page called Bocas Property Sale, Rent, and Wanted. It was not yet very active, but perhaps a posting there could help in your search. All said, be especially careful when finding your nest here. Friends of ours rented an apartment that, upon arrival, had a loft instead of a second bedroom that was too hot to sleep in, with only very minimal kitchen facilities. Make sure you know what you’re getting – ask for photos and complete descriptions. When you are talking to prospective landlords, make sure you ask about filtered water, hot water, air conditioning and laundry. All of these things might require compromises and it’s best to know what they are before you arrive. There really are some very beautiful places to stay here, though, and you could very possibly find the nest of your dreams!